daviscalifornia

My 86 year old mother is considering radioembolization for a 5 cm liver tumor, HCC, that has invaded into her portal vein, but does not appear to have spread further. Until a few weeks ago, she was an unusually active 86 year old, but in the last few weeks, she has grown weaker. Thus we are leaning towards radioembolization (at Stanford, Dr. Sze and Louie) ASAP.

I have seen information that makes it clear that we can expect some ‘side effects’ in the first days or perhaps 1-2 weeks afterwards – fatigue, pain, nausea. The notion that treatment is followed by short-term side effects does not worry my mother.

However, we have not seen literature on what we might expect with regard to undesired side effects in the next, say, 2-3 months. I only know one person who had this treatment, and she had NO side effects. But is that common? I realize that we might not see clear positive effects in the first 2-3 months, but will we also likely see little/no negative side effects? If you have relevant experience or information on positive or negative changes following radioembolization, I’d love to hear your thoughts.